1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of electronic devices and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for enabling electronic devices to modify their user interface, application set and, therefore, their perceived functionality based, at least in part, on the location of the electronic device.
2. Background Information
The evolution of electronic devices continues at an ever increasing rate. Indeed, electronic devices have infiltrated many areas of every day life to the point where they are commonly thought of as household or office “appliances” as we become ever more deeply entrenched in the electronic age. Examples of this evolution abound as electronic organizers have all but replaced paper-based calendars and organizers; pagers and cellular phones have released us from the bond of wireline telephone systems; substantially instantaneous communication via electronic mail has supplanted its slower postal service counterpart; and the global communications network colloquially referred to as the Internet has opened the libraries of the world to anyone with a computer (in any of its many forms) and a modem.
In the continuing effort to improve the usability of such electronic appliances which they produce, manufacturers have focused on the form factor, e.g., size, of the appliance. That is, the effort expended by manufacturers of electronic appliances has been to reduce the size of the electronic appliance, its power consumption, and the heat generated by the appliance to make it more portable for today's highly mobile users. The size of, for example, notebook computers, personal digital assistants (PDA's), personal communication systems (PCS) handsets, pagers and personal navigation systems (e.g., utilizing satellite-based global positioning system (GPS) technology) have all been reduced to make them easier to fit into a briefcase, a backpack or a shirt pocket.
Although the reduced size of these appliances has, indeed, made them more appealing to the masses, many consumers have realized that these smaller devices are merely a reflection of their larger ancestors. That is, the smaller electronic appliances provide the same information and application set using the same user interface as their larger counterpart. For example, the user of a computer system will typically utilize the same operating system rendering the same user interface irregardless of whether the computer is being used in the home or office.
Those skilled in the art have begun to realize that users of electronic appliances often have different electronic appliance needs depending upon where it is being used. For example, someone using the appliance at work will need ready access to work files, phone directories and the like, whereas a home user of the device may need ready access to home finances, games and educational applications, personal phone directories and the like. A salesman, using the appliance on a business trip may well have a different and unique set of needs altogether, requiring the device to be utilized as a pager, facsimile machine or any of a host of other applications. Although the users of such devices in these alternate locations may, in fact, have quite different interests and, consequently, entirely different sets of needs, the developers of such systems have heretofore disregarded this need, relegating such users to buy a plethora of dedicated electronic appliances to satisfy these individual needs.
Some devices have been developed which provide unique information to a system user on the basis of time and/or date. Personal Digital Assistant's (PDA's) such as the Palm Pilot™, by 3COM, Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif., offers a time planner application which will alert a user when it is time for a pre-scheduled event, manually programmed by the system user. Analogously, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) navigation systems provide location based information to a user. However, each of the foregoing are dedicated appliances, incapable of automatically adjusting their user interface and perceived functionality, i.e., their personality based on location or user.
Thus a need exists for a method and apparatus for providing a location based appliance personality, unencumbered by the deficiencies and limitations commonly associated with the prior art.